Two days ago, when LEVEL-5 held its LEVEL-5 VISION II broadcast, many fans commented on how the show had some clear uses of AI. In particular, the CEO of LEVEL-5, Akihiro Hino, had an avatar that would move and change depending on the art style of the game that was being shown. This, in turn, led to many people in both Japan and in the West to raise their concerns that the company would be going all in on generative AI, ruining their visual identity and consequently, using a tool that would make their games worse.
Today, Akihiro Hino released a new statement on X (formerly Twitter), talking about the situation, where he reassures the fans that none of LEVEL-5’s games will contain “carelessly generated assets.”
I’ve translated the tweet below, so you can have a look:
[About AI Usage at the LEVEL-5 VISION 2026 II Broadcast]
“Due to how we used AI for the video editing of the broadcast, we’ve noticed some concerns have been raised regarding the actual content of our games, so I would like to offer an explanation. Simply out of a desire to make the presentation spectacular, we tried incorporating a process that also served as an experiment for using the latest AI technology. However, it seems this has made a lot of people uncomfortable, and to that, I apologize.
However, at LEVEL-5, the elements tied to the charm and identity of our titles, such as the scenarios, character designs, and foundational settings are all created entirely by humans. Our goal with AI is to improve efficiency, such as accurately translating 2D illustrations into 3D polygons. None of our games will contain carelessly generated assets, so please rest assured on that front.
Conversely, the efficiency of AI has allowed our creative team to spend more time on the true essence of creation, and I believe this will allow our finished titles to reach a level of quality that will satisfy our players. We are currently on a process of trial and error to potentially reduce our current development cycle from 5 years to just 2 years.
Still, we cannot deny we did use AI as a desire to create an easy-to-understand presentation. We will take this lesson going forward, and we hope you will enjoy the next LEVEL-5 presentation.”
